Buzzwords

"My words mean just what I want them to mean, neither more nor less." -- Humpty Dumpty.

If you sound like you know what you're talking about, people assume you do. -- Pug Mahoney

  Words matter, and they are important because they convey a meaning. If they don't, or when they are overused, they lose meaning and become useless.
   That's what happens with buzzwords. They become popular and overused, appearing in contexts far removed from their origin and become fill words; that is, they take up space and time, and perhaps sound important, but in reality mean nothing.
   Today's examples are iconic and existential. Right away, the examples sound like they will be important, and readers may become anxious to know what the relevant words are.
   But the examples to be considered are those two words themselves: iconic, and existential. What do they really mean?
   They have been bandied about so much by recent TV commentators and politicians that listeners assume they describe something really big, and really important.
   A quick check with a dictionary, however, reveals that the words as used have little or nothing to do with the topic, as in "an existential threat."
   The impression is that an "existential threat" is somehow more dangerous than some other kind of threat. But the term "existential," as defined in the New Oxford American Dictionary, means "of or pertaining to existence." It is because it is.
   There is another meaning used by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard having far more subtle and complicated connotations that are in no way connected to the popular usage.
   The second example for today, iconic, is defined as "relating to an icon." That, of course, is easy to discern, but consider the meaning of the term "icon," which refers to an image of a holy figure, or a representative symbol.
    In current popular usage, iconic is used as an adjective to emphasize that the person or thing referred to is somehow really, really big and very important, much more so than an ordinary person or thing.
   Any connection to a religious or holy figure is coincidental, and may represent a symbol that is quite the opposite of spirituality or morality.